Whereas survivability stats, stam and mastery, is doing work in the spikes (if played properly with SotR).

Would have been nice if your graphs had included some timeline and maybe even some indication when SotR (and ohter CDs) was actually up. Because high mastery could make smooth damage look spiky (and the even spacing of your spikes is pretty suspicious).

Given the right circumstances it could even leave relatively smooth damage intake that would have been no problem with enough haste (due to self healing and overall reduction of damage intake) dangerous due to higher healing intake needed (the spikes when SotR falls off would even look like in your graphs).

From the prot tier I only have gloves and legs. I just got a chest token and I'm wondering: Should I grab the Ret chest (better stats) or the prot one (and work for the 4p bonus)?

I'm tending heavily towards the Ret one but any insight would be appreciated.

We are very close to the next tier so you are very likely to break your 4set very quickly, if you even get it before the patch. On top of that, I have never been a fan of the T14 prot set, always preferred retset / offset routes.

I would not get it, but the choice is yours. If you are raiding 25 you could consider it.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

Would have been nice if your graphs had included some timeline and maybe even some indication when SotR (and ohter CDs) was actually up. Because high mastery could make smooth damage look spiky (and the even spacing of your spikes is pretty suspicious).

Given the right circumstances it could even leave relatively smooth damage intake that would have been no problem with enough haste (due to self healing and overall reduction of damage intake) dangerous due to higher healing intake needed (the spikes when SotR falls off would even look like in your graphs).

If you refer the WoL graphs.
The graphs from my damage taken is entire fights from start to end. So the timespan is between 6 and 10 minutes.
Also I do not believe WoL is that sensitive that your DTPS will go up and down in between SotRs

Also, cooldowns are used in the peaks, not the floors of the graphs. Without proper cd usage those spikes would be even higher.
But yeah, looking at those logs I can tell exactly what every single spike is (and it is all some predictable boss ability)

Just look at your own logs and check damage taken.

Haste build will never have a smoother damage in-take on a short burst spike than mastery. Unless it is 100% magic damage ofc, in which case, stamina would be better either way.

I am haste stacked not mastery stacked. Since the damage in-take is not a concern either way, can be handled with own cooldowns. DPS is the only issue for 10 man tanks really.
Though, if bosses did say 50-100% more damage than currently, then I would probably be mastery stacked since it is better for survival.

The thing is, I know why I am haste stacked, it is not because this pseudo-smoothening reasoning that 99% of paladins are. It is simply because it is the secondary stat with the highest dps. Mastery is better than haste for pure tanking, there is just no good arguements against it. However that said, haste is still the best stat in 10 mans because tanking is not the main concern. As long as tanking is easy and you can survive haste stacked, then yes, haste will win out over mastery due to the dps which is why I use haste.

Originally Posted by Grimord

Nope, strictly 10-man. And I didn't like the Prot set bonuses that much either, even though the 2p did prove useful one time or another.

I am much sooner than later not finding myself usg AD even remotely close to every 3 minutes. Since it is the oh shit cooldown atm.
I would go for the ret piece probably, but it is your own choice

Last edited by Firefly33; 2013-02-11 at 11:13 PM.

Volun-told - A supposedly optional event, award, assignment, or activity in which a person (or persons) are required to attend either by persons-in-charge nominating them or their peers expecting them to be there. The individual often has no say in the matter, and non-attendance in frowned upon.I am so tired of seeing terrible people, being admired, for being terrible people.

Kind of interesting how others view AD. I almost always, with the occasional exception of using it to exploit certain mechanics, used AD for the damage reduction, and thought of the one time death prevention was a neat perk.

One thing that, for me, throws a wrench into the decisions of what facets of tanking are important is the way friends play their healers. Very casually (though all of us in the group are rather casual, of course), goofing off during combat, every once in a while not even paying attention, and nearly always healing reactively, as opposed to having a cast started ahead of time, sometimes even waiting for significant damage to even start a cast. And this even during first attempts on heroic bosses. So smoothening became rather important (mechanically timed spikes for specific fights were fine, since the usage of cooldowns is often predetermined anyway, so people for the most part knew when to use them), because a heal could be somewhat of a long time in coming, especially during times when they'd want to be paying attention to other members in the raid.

If you refer the WoL graphs.
The graphs from my damage taken is entire fights from start to end. So the timespan is between 6 and 10 minutes.
Also I do not believe WoL is that sensitive that your DTPS will go up and down in between SotRs

Thank you for giving the timespan, that was the most important information missing for me. There are graphs out there that produce graphs that would look exactly like this for much shorter time spans. It could have been the last 20s before dieing or something like that.

Also, cooldowns are used in the peaks, not the floors of the graphs. Without proper cd usage those spikes would be even higher.

We wouldn't know, could be the other way around, not with the time span given though.

But yeah, looking at those logs I can tell exactly what every single spike is (and it is all some predictable boss ability)

Just look at your own logs and check damage taken.

Haste build will never have a smoother damage in-take on a short burst spike than mastery. Unless it is 100% magic damage ofc, in which case, stamina would be better either way.

I am haste stacked not mastery stacked. Since the damage in-take is not a concern either way, can be handled with own cooldowns. DPS is the only issue for 10 man tanks really.
Though, if bosses did say 50-100% more damage than currently, then I would probably be mastery stacked since it is better for survival.

It would actually depend on the damage. If the spikes would be higher, then yes, probably. If the base damage was higher and the spikes the same you would prefer haste over mastery even more. (Faster bosskills and more selfhealing.)

The thing is, I know why I am haste stacked, it is not because this pseudo-smoothening reasoning that 99% of paladins are. It is simply because it is the secondary stat with the highest dps. Mastery is better than haste for pure tanking, there is just no good arguements against it. However that said, haste is still the best stat in 10 mans because tanking is not the main concern. As long as tanking is easy and you can survive haste stacked, then yes, haste will win out over mastery due to the dps which is why I use haste.

A Stamina and haste build would also win hands down in any fight with very high magic damage (because of higher self healing.)

Yes, I realise that the self healing argument amounts to the same as the dps one, its just that is is in fact part of the pure tanking job - which is reducing the efford needed to recover from targeted damage abilies of the encounter. (Wiping, running back, and retrying the encounter is much wasted efford )

Yes, I realise that the self healing argument amounts to the same as the dps one, its just that is is in fact part of the pure tanking job - which is reducing the efford needed to recover from targeted damage abilies of the encounter. (Wiping, running back, and retrying the encounter is much wasted efford )

The problem with counting self healing in the same umbrella as mitigation, specially in the form of WoG, is that if healers see you missing 60% health they'll fill that 60% health, no matter if you heal yourself for 20%, it takes a lot of training to work with tanks who have large self healing (ie DKs) so if you're basing it on one fight it gains srs devaluation

I'm currently haste stacked (8k haste and 650k life raid buffed) running 25 mans with little issue (and that is why I am haste stacking). However, as soon as we hit Grand Empress heroic or Terrace heroic, I'm switching my gems to stamina. This will put me well above 700K (I estimate around 720k) life raid-buffed while keeping 5500-6000 haste rating, so I'll still have the nice, quick rotation and the hit and expertise caps, however my survivability to spikes should increase due to the higher buffer.

Would it not be easier to just play with trinkets at that point, rather than re-gemming? It's a far cheaper, less permanent change.

I've been toying with trinkets on HC Empress, but since we're still adjusting healer comp/total, it's a bit anecdotal. Usually I run Liquid Courage and Lei Shen's for most encounters, but I've been swapping in Jade Warlord over Lei Shen's for that. Losing 1200 haste for 1750 stam and another mastery proc on-demand. Still keeping ~20% haste, and far easier to change on the fly.

FWIW, with my "normal" setup, I hover around 700k+ anyhow, so YMMV. Just wanted to toss that out there if it's an option for you.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

Would it not be easier to just play with trinkets at that point, rather than re-gemming? It's a far cheaper, less permanent change.

I've been toying with trinkets on HC Empress, but since we're still adjusting healer comp/total, it's a bit anecdotal. Usually I run Liquid Courage and Lei Shen's for most encounters, but I've been swapping in Jade Warlord over Lei Shen's for that. Losing 1200 haste for 1750 stam and another mastery proc on-demand. Still keeping ~20% haste, and far easier to change on the fly.

FWIW, with my "normal" setup, I hover around 700k+ anyhow, so YMMV. Just wanted to toss that out there if it's an option for you.

Depends how you class cheaper, if hes got double upgraded haste stacker trinkets then swapping to stam ones will be a huge change, where as changing gems could be quite cheap, maybe 1k gold per switch

The problem with counting self healing in the same umbrella as mitigation, specially in the form of WoG, is that if healers see you missing 60% health they'll fill that 60% health, no matter if you heal yourself for 20%, it takes a lot of training to work with tanks who have large self healing (ie DKs) so if you're basing it on one fight it gains srs devaluation

Ah, but I did not. I spoke about 'healing needed' not about 'mitigation of damage' and it really depends. There is no down ranking anymore, healers seldom heal for exactly as much as would be needed. Yes some of that healing will end up causing overheal but so will your mitigation (since it tailor the hits you take to the size of the heals the healers have available).
And please remember: Overheal is not bad in itself, it adds margin for error, just like unused mana after the fight is done does for healers. Only if there are other critical problems you can solve by taking stats that caused that surplus should you do so.

Depends how you class cheaper, if hes got double upgraded haste stacker trinkets then swapping to stam ones will be a huge change, where as changing gems could be quite cheap, maybe 1k gold per switch

I run with 2/2 Lei Shen's, which is what I was referring to in the 1200(ish) haste for 1750 stam swap. I was under the impression that he was going to swap all haste gems for stam or mast/stam, which (on my realm at least) would easily run 2-3k. Granted, that's not much to most people, but it is more permanent than swapping an item like a trinket based on fight needs...I suppose that was my main point, not the cost.

However, since he's a JC, it's certainly cheap to move those stats around, though you're only moving ~900 haste for ~900 stam, which may end up lost in the wash. I guess it's all up to how much of a change you're really looking for.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

I'm currently haste stacked (8k haste and 650k life raid buffed) running 25 mans with little issue (and that is why I am haste stacking). However, as soon as we hit Grand Empress heroic or Terrace heroic, I'm switching my gems to stamina. This will put me well above 700K (I estimate around 720k) life raid-buffed while keeping 5500-6000 haste rating, so I'll still have the nice, quick rotation and the hit and expertise caps, however my survivability to spikes should increase due to the higher buffer.

You shouldn't need to, my first empress kill I was about 610k health buffed(using str flask/food), Really just boils down to having a cd up while your tanking the 3 adds at the same time. For terrace though I usually put in stam + mastery trinkets for protectors and lei shi, haste for tsuloong, and haven't had much time in p2 of sha to really get a fell for it, but with 3 tanks rotating boss I don't think the stamina will be needed.

You shouldn't need to, my first empress kill I was about 610k health buffed(using str flask/food), Really just boils down to having a cd up while your tanking the 3 adds at the same time. For terrace though I usually put in stam + mastery trinkets for protectors and lei shi, haste for tsuloong, and haven't had much time in p2 of sha to really get a fell for it, but with 3 tanks rotating boss I don't think the stamina will be needed.

haste, the only things that gave me trouble was pulling everything to first boss in stormstout, ended up pull to just before room then running in after most elites were dead and some trash backs in scarlet halls. Everything else was pretty much gravy.